The Dark Tower

But he circles “c,” and five days later he finds himself in the ante-room of an out-of-business dance studio in San Francisco (his train-fare from Sacramento prepaid), along with three other men and a sullen-looking teenage girl (the girl’s the former Tanya Leeds of Bryce, Colorado, as it turns out). Better than four hundred people showed up for the test in the gym, lured by the honeypot ad. Goats, for the most part. Here, however, are four sheep. One per cent. And even this, as Brautigan will discover in the full course of time, is an amazing catch.

Eventually he is shown into an office marked PRIVATE. It is mostly filled with dusty ballet stuff. A broad-shouldered, hard-faced man in a brown suit sits in a folding chair, incongruously surrounded by filmy pink tutus. Ted thinks, A real toad in an imaginary garden.

The man sits forward, arms on his elephantine thighs. “Mr. Brautigan,” he says, “I may or may not be a toad, but I can offer you the job of a lifetime. I can also send you out of here with a handshake and a much-obliged. It depends on the answer to one question. A question about a question, in fact.”

The man, whose name turns out to be Frank Armitage, hands Ted a sheet of paper. On it, blown up, is Question 23, the one about the Young Man and the Satchel of Money.

“You circled ‘c,’ ” Frank Armitage says. “So now, with absolutely no hesitation whatever, please tell me why.”

“Because ‘c’ was what you wanted,” Ted replies with absolutely no hesitation whatever.

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I’m a telepath,” Ted says. “And that’s what you’re really looking for.” He tries to keep his poker face and thinks he succeeds pretty well, but inside he’s filled with a great and singing relief. Because he’s found a job? No. Because they’ll shortly make him an offer that would make the prizes on the new TV quiz shows look tame? No.

Because someone finally wants what he can do.

Because someone finally wants him.

Seven

The job offer turned out to be another honeypot, but Brautigan was honest enough in his taped memoir to say he might have gone along even if he’d known the truth.

“Because talent won’t be quiet, doesn’t know how to be quiet,” he said. “Whether it’s a talent for safe-cracking, thought-reading, or dividing ten-digit numbers in your head, it screams to be used. It never shuts up. It’ll wake you in the middle of your tiredest night, screaming, ‘Use me, use me, use me! I’m tired of just sitting here! Use me, fuckhead, use me!’ ”

Jake broke into a roar of pre-adolescent laughter. He covered his mouth but kept laughing through his hands. Oy looked up at him, those black eyes with the gold wedding rings floating in them, grinning fiendishly.